Toward praxically-just transformations: interrupting racism in teacher education

ABSTRACT

Recognising the importance of learning from experience, this mixed methods study critically problematises how teacher educators position student teaching as pivotal in teacher education programmes’ inability to focus on racial equity. Through learnings from a survey of US university-based teacher educators who constructed student teaching placements in schools serving students of colour as problems, this article unveils how the concept of quality cloaks the re-production of racism in and through teacher education. Seeking to address how teacher education is implicated in the re-production of racial inequities, a teacher educator partnered with teachers in the most segregated system of state schools in the US to transform student teaching. In describing a situated representation of an innovation at once practice-focused and theoretical, this article illustrates the power and potential for praxically-just critical transformations in teacher education. Findings shed light on the power of Freirean culture circles for transforming teacher education. Implications point toward the need to recognise, problematise, and interrupt ways in which the White-centric rhetoric and practice of teacher education continue to foster racism and re-produce injustice.

KEYWORDS:

• Culture circles
• justice
• racism
• student teaching
• teacher education
• transformation

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Rita Kohli, Thomas M. Philip, and Timothy San Pedro, all of whom provided insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Council of Teachers of English.